Poll: Windows 8 Experience (How do you like it?)

By Steven P.
in Microsoft (Windows)

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Grand Master

Xerxes

Posted
Posted

Not bad :) I decided to install it on my laptop (which was running the Release Preview previously) and running well, although the freezing issue is slightly annoying (never did that in the RP). All in all, so far so good! (Y)

Grand Master

Denis W. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

I think adding ads to their card games was the final straw, a 30 second ad to play a game that was free in the last version? No Thanks.

Wasn't the 30-second ads only on the Daily Challenges? The game itself (if you select not to do the Daily Challenges and just stick with the game) is ad-free just like on previous Windows releases. Just saying, I have nothing against your vote since it's your own personal experience.

Speaking of ads but not related to games, I noticed the Music app also inserts audio/video ads... when you're listening to your own music. I can understand ads for streaming music, but if I'm playing something off my disk why is there a need to treat my offline collection like a radio station?

edit: haven't heard any ads since turning off the Xbox Music Cloud and not playing any streaming music.

Grand Master

Scorbing

Posted
Posted

Installed fine. Everything seems to work out of the box (did a clean install). It's quicker than 7.

For those who are not liking it. Leave it on a few days. Once you get used to it, you may change your mind.

Been using it since Beta....I still hate it. This OS is perfect for tablets, not for the desktop.

Rising Star

NightScreams

Posted
Posted

Though I would share this

Here's a coupon code for Stardock's Start8

S8-MNPS-XJLA-AHHY

You can also make it classic W7 or various sizes of W8's menu. Taskbar transparency, boot to desktop, disable side menu's...etc.

Here is one of the options you can do with the start menu.

greenshot20121028150802.jpg

40297111.jpg

Grand Master

theyarecomingforyou

Posted
Posted
Is there a way to fix IE10's fonts? Seems to be a bit small and close to each other compared to chrome and Firefox(on the right of the screenshot compared to IE's on the left)?

It's excessive font smoothing and it's rather annoying. The same thing happens in some Metro apps, as from what I can tell WinRT uses the IE10 rendering engine. I don't use IE10 myself but I'd be interested to know if it can be disabled.

Contributor

TheGreek

Posted
Posted

Hey guys! I love windows 8 so far but I have one big problem with it. My microsoft account includes my facebook too but somehow I dont get the messages from facebook via the messaging app. I see what I send but I dont get the answers. Only on facebook.

In the release preview it was working fine. Any help? Thank you

Proficient

epk

Posted
Posted

Well, I hate it. No, no cos of the whole Start screen thingy that everyone is complaining about but cos it slowed my PC down to a crawl.

Every time I use Firefox or IE10 my cpu usage rushes to the max, fan spins out of control and the system becomes unresponsive. I don't know if it's some driver issue or what, but it just sucks. I'm waiting for my external hard drive to arrive so I can move back to 7.

Also, the metro apps don't see my internet connection, and the store is slow and never downloads updates. I don't know why

By the way, the upgrade Advisor told me there shouldn't be any issues. Ye, right.

Rookie

CubeDweller

Posted
Posted

For a desktop PC, I don't like it. I'm a power user, so I realize I represent a very tiny minority of the Windows community, but Windows 8 was clearly designed for a simpler device with a touchscreen. It was also obviously designed for device users, not power users (certainly not anyone who likes to tinker with stuff).

The start screen is stupid. I use a lot of programs often (I'm a professional software developer) and after getting everything installed there are like 200 icons on the start screen. Yes, I could go through and remove the ones put there by various installers, but some of them are actually very useful even though they are not often used (e.g. "Visual Studio 2010 Command Prompt"). I have Beyond Compare, Notepad++, Visual Studio 2008/2010/2012, SQL Server 2008 R2/2012, Office 2013, BitDefender 2013, VLC Player, and various other small development utilities. The start screen looks like crap since many of the things I use on a daily basis are not Metro apps, nor will they likely ever be Metro apps (they're too complex to fit in the simplistic constraints enforced by the Metro interface).

The desktop looks like crap. I don't like the auto-colored opaque window borders mixed with the Aero-glass task bar. If the task bar can be glass, give the option to enable glass window borders! So it saves battery power on portable devices - cool, but I'm not using a portable device, I'm on a powerful desktop!

I agree with many others here. I wish Microsoft would have released Windows 8 Desktop and Windows 8 Portable as two different interfaces built upon the same core. There's no reason a Metro app couldn't live within the desktop (for testing Metro apps, for example) but forcing ALL users to work as though they are using a 10" tablet is just silly.

I've been a Windows guy for 20 years and a C# / .NET developer for 10. With Windows 8, and the direction Microsoft is taking the platform in the future (the legacy desktop is going away), I just don't see the value of my time investment anymore. I'm looking closely at Linux and development for Android, particularly since there is much talk about Mono on Android now, allowing me to port my C# skills to Android devices. Ubuntu 12.10 actually looks pretty nice, and while I will keep Windows 7 around for games I think I may soon be wiping my Windows 8 partition and replacing it with a Linux distribution.

  • AdventureTime, BeerFan, +LogicalApex and 1 other
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Community Regular

Astrum

Posted
Posted

I returned back to Windows 7. I don't like the whole schizoid approach to split Metro and Desktop. I feel claustrophobia strikes in every corner of this metro tunnel: it seems vast but it is difficult to breathe inside. To me Metro kills multitasking. I like vista views, I hate ?guided paths? and live jumping corners. I think Windows 8 is the most annoying OS I?ve ever used. Take new Skype interface for instance -- it takes the whole screen with almost nothing to fill: just some big stupid buttons. And when you need to customize, you feel yourself like a poor user inside crappy menu of some cheap no-name device from China. It took me 10 minutes to understand how to change temperature units from Fahrenheit to Celsius in the Weather application. I would not call it ?a happy user experience?, cos I?m not sure I learned something from that.

Cyrillic fonts in IE10 look awful, and I understand it will stay like this.

If they continue like this, I will switch to something else, yet I?m very happy with Win7 now.

Apprentice

Agret

Posted
Posted

Install went really fast for an upgrade (only took about 15min) - the drvier for my soundblaster card (kx audio) isn't working and the version of MacDrive I have isn't working either. Everything else seems to be working okay.

As far as features go the improvements in speed are welcome and I like that you can pause / resume file transfers and can mount ISOs as part of the OS. Other than that i'm not really sure what's new (aside from "Metro")

Mentor

NateB1

Posted
Posted

I installed Windows 8 on my mom's desktop PC, and she didn't like it at first, due to the huge change, but she's coming around - I think, mostly, because I also installed an SSD on her PC and her boot time went from 5+ minutes to 10 seconds - everything opens instantaneously now. I think once she gets used to the Modern UI, she'll really enjoy it, because all she does is write emails/write documents/browse the web, and not having to worry about toolbars cluttering up the Modern IE, all the settings for *every* Modern app being in the same place, the print dialog looking *exactly* the same, no matter what Modern app she uses will be highly beneficial once she's comfortable navigating the new UI. Plus, there's no annoying Flash update dialogs on what seems like every reboot.

My 13 y/o brother *loves* it - he's downloaded a ton of free apps from the Windows store, has drawn several paintings using the FreshPaint app (with a mouse!), and has had fun organizing his Start screen and revealing more of the background picture.

My 19 y/o sister is absolutely in love with her Surface - she's more of a tactile person by nature, and being able to touch the screen is a *huge* deal for her. She likes Windows 8 because she can take notes in class with the keyboard - much more useful than an iPad.

As for me, I love Windows 8 both on the desktop (with 2 24" monitors) and on my Surface - yes, the Modern apps can occupy too much screen space if they're fullscreen, but I mostly remain in the desktop world, while sometimes having a Modern app snapped to the side of my screen - alternating between MetroTwit and the music app, both of which are very handy to have open in the "minimized" mode.

Explorer

DesiSpark

Posted
Posted

so far .. i like it love. it. my all programs that i need running well.

photoshop is running better than as it was running on windows 7. :woot: and windows recovery after power off accidently to windows is really good. :D

Problem that i observed so far :-

1 - google chrome when i installed there are 2 running one in app section and other desktop version not opening pages ,

how to minimize app ?? does anyone knows ??? :cry:

-----------

PS - I don't recommend Windows 7 or Windows 8 to any GAMER. games hang/slow down. :/

Rest GO FOR IT. :woot: BUY ONE :)

Grand Master

Andre S. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
I've been a Windows guy for 20 years and a C# / .NET developer for 10. With Windows 8, and the direction Microsoft is taking the platform in the future (the legacy desktop is going away), I just don't see the value of my time investment anymore. I'm looking closely at Linux and development for Android, particularly since there is much talk about Mono on Android now, allowing me to port my C# skills to Android devices. Ubuntu 12.10 actually looks pretty nice, and while I will keep Windows 7 around for games I think I may soon be wiping my Windows 8 partition and replacing it with a Linux distribution.
While I agree with most of your points about poor design in Windows 8 (and I'm also a C# developer :) ), the Desktop is not going away anytime soon. Put it this way: the majority of Microsoft's own software products are desktop applications. Touch screens cannot replace the mouse and keyboard for productivity and efficiency, and WinRT is no replacement for the desktop. Also consider that while Microsoft is diverting a lot of attention to tablets and phones, Windows 8 brings important investments in desktop-only APIs and desktop-only technologies like WPF. I suggest you take a look at a recent conference at Build 2012 titled Desktop apps: WPF 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012, which makes it clear Microsoft is still actively developing these technologies.

After watching a lot of Microsoft talks this week with Build 2012 in addition to keeping up-to-date with their various blogs etc., I've formed the opinion that the poor interaction between WinRT and the desktop in Windows 8 is simply Microsoft being over-ambitious with this product. They know businesses are happy with Windows 7 and won't upgrade any time soon to Windows 8 (Ballmer actually said that in his keynote!), so they can afford taking risks with the UI and using Windows 8 to get a real foot into the mobile market segment. It's a transition, immature OS and there are no alarmist conclusions to draw from its imperfections. Just stick to Windows 7 like Microsoft expects you to and wait for Windows 9 if you don't like it.

Also, Valve can troll all they want, Ubuntu won't see any increased adoption because of Windows 8, just like it failed during the Windows Vista debacle which was way worse than this. All this talk of switching to this ugly OS that doesn't have drivers for anything and doesn't support any apps is beyond ridiculous. Even if Windows 8 was a complete failure (which it already isn't), Windows 7 is still a million times better than Ubuntu will ever be until Windows 9. And certainly way beyond that.

Grand Master

+LogicalApex MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

While I agree with most of your points about poor design in Windows 8 (and I'm also a C# developer :) ), the Desktop is not going away anytime soon. Put it this way: the majority of Microsoft's own software products are desktop applications. Touch screens cannot replace the mouse and keyboard for productivity and efficiency, and WinRT is no replacement for the desktop. Also consider that while Microsoft is diverting a lot of attention to tablets and phones, Windows 8 brings important investments in desktop-only APIs and desktop-only technologies like WPF. I suggest you take a look at a recent conference at Build 2012 titled Desktop apps: WPF 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012, which makes it clear Microsoft is still actively developing these technologies.

After watching a lot of Microsoft talks this week with Build 2012 in addition to keeping up-to-date with their various blogs etc., I've formed the opinion that the poor interaction between WinRT and the desktop in Windows 8 is simply Microsoft being over-ambitious with this product. They know businesses are happy with Windows 7 and won't upgrade any time soon to Windows 8 (Ballmer actually said that in his keynote!), so they can afford taking risks with the UI and using Windows 8 to get a real foot into the mobile market segment. It's a transition, immature OS and there are no alarmist conclusions to draw from its imperfections. Just stick to Windows 7 like Microsoft expects you to and wait for Windows 9 if you don't like it.

Also, Valve can troll all they want, Ubuntu won't see any increased adoption because of Windows 8, just like it failed during the Windows Vista debacle which was way worse than this. All this talk of switching to this ugly OS that doesn't have drivers for anything and doesn't support any apps is beyond ridiculous. Even if Windows 8 was a complete failure (which it already isn't), Windows 7 is still a million times better than Ubuntu will ever be until Windows 9. And certainly way beyond that.

I hope you're right...

Sadly for me I'm forced to stare at this abomination unless I abandon Windows Phone development, which I'm considering.

Grand Master

Andre S. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Also consider that Microsoft released Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop, which for the first time combines C++, C# and VB in a single, up-to-date and free IDE which can only be used to create desktop applications. The purpose of the express editions of VS, btw, is to attract developers to the platform so they can create more value for it. The fact that they're releasing a desktop edition of VS Express 2012 shows they still want to attract developers to this platform and are backing it up with the same type of investments they have been making in previous releases of Windows.

Veteran

iron2000

Posted
Posted

Seems like Win 8 broke setting file associations in individual apps (no go for MPC-HC and Irfanview).

All need to be set in "Default Programs" control panel.

--

Filenames with international characters display as squares, the characters display sometimes but sometimes its squares.

Win 7 was good with international filenames.

Win 8 really need to clean up all those small problems.

Some reference and a workaround:

http://gdgt.com/question/fix-japanese-text-in-windows-8-displaying-squares-icj/

http://superuser.com/questions/463530/windows-7-8-japanese-font-kanji-occasionally-displaying-as-squares

Veteran

iron2000

Posted
Posted

Now it seems like search is not searching my indexed locations like in Win 7.

Checked the folder in "Indexing Options" and it doesn't search there.

Unchecked all the picture file types but it still show them in search results.

Is Start screen search and search charm different from the Win7 start menu search?

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